Abstract – The linguistic situation in Kazakhstan has been shaped by historical and socio-political factors. As a result, Kazakh–Russian bilingualism has developed in the country. This type of bilingualism is predominantly characterized as semi-dominant. Under such conditions, the functioning of the Kazakh language as the state language remains a highly relevant issue. Although Kazakh has been granted the status of the state language by law, it is still not fully used across many domains of everyday communication. This situation may contribute to the weakening of the native language among Russian-speaking Kazakh youth. This article examines the phenomenon of interference observed in the speech production of Russian-speaking Kazakh students who are acquiring Kazakh as a second language from cognitive and psycholinguistic perspectives. The research focuses on students whose native language is Kazakh but who received their secondary education in Russian and predominantly use Russian in higher education, social environments, and the information space. The participants in the study use Kazakh within a limited functional range, mainly in family communication, during Kazakh language classes, or in everyday бытовые situations. The article describes interference not as a linguistic error or a deviation from linguistic norms, but as a natural cognitive adaptation mechanism of the bilingual mind and as a phenomenon arising from the interaction of the semantic and conceptual systems of two languages. The study analyzes the role of cognitive mechanisms such as associative transfer, the literal rendering of figurative meanings, conceptual overlapping, and frame shifting in the formation of interference. The article also addresses the issue of language attrition in Kazakh under conditions of semi-dominant Kazakh–Russian bilingualism in Kazakhstan. The main objective of the study is to identify recurrent linguistic deviations in the speech of Russian-speaking Kazakh youth. In addition, the study aims to distinguish these deviations from interference-related errors and to determine whether they represent manifestations of language attrition. The research employs cognitive-interpretative, discourse, comparative, and pragmatic methods of analysis. The findings reveal that interference among the studied group of students manifests itself at the lexical-semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic levels of language. The results of the study demonstrate that interference is a natural cognitive process activated during the formation of new linguistic experience in a bilingual individual. At the same time, the study identified a tendency toward the stabilization of interference-related forms in both the oral and written speech of the students. Such a phenomenon may lead to a decline in the active use of national-cultural content, phraseological resources, and natural usage patterns of the Kazakh language, thereby increasing the risk of language attrition. Therefore, the findings suggest that interference in Kazakh language teaching should be viewed not merely as an error requiring correction, but also as an important indicator reflecting the cognitive developmental characteristics of language learners.